Guilt free chocolate cake

This cake is gluten free and does not have butter, so it's a good one if you need to fulfill dietary requirements. I didn't make the ricotta icing to go with it and found it a wee bit dry. It would have been nice with some sort of liqueur drizzled through it or the addtion of the icing. Although with some ice cream and strawberries it made a very nice dessert. Unfortunately my friend couldn't try it because it had eggs in, and had to make do with just the strawberries on their own. This recipe is from Annie Bell "In my Kitchen". I think I prefer Chocolate cake that comes with the guilt factor, but a nice one to know about.


Ingredients

1, 20cm tin with a removable base, lined with greaseproof paper
4 medium eggs, separated
150g golden caster sugar
3 tablespoons good-quality cocoa powder, sifted
225g ground almonds
1 teaspoon baking powder, sifted
Butter, for greasing

Ricotta Cream
2 x 250g tubs of ricotta, drained of any liquid
3 tablespoons honey
4 tbsp coarsely grated 85% cocoa solids dark chocolate

Method
Preheat the oven to 180C and butter a 20cm springform cake tin with a removable base.
Stiffly whisk the egg whites in a medium bowl, a hand-held electric beater is ideal. Whisk together the egg yolks and sugar in a large bowl until pale and creamy. Fold the egg whites into the egg mixture in thirds, then fold in the cocoa, the ground almonds, and baking powder.
Transfer the cake mixture to the prepared pan, smooth the surface, and bake it for 35 minutes until the sponge has begun to shrink from the sides and a skewer inserted into the center comes out clean. Run a knife around the edge of the cake and leave it to cool in the pan.
For the filling, place the ricotta and honey in a food processor and blend until smooth (if you do this by hand, it will remain grainy). Remove the collar from the cake, but you can leave it on the bottom for ease of serving. Slit the cake in half, taking into account the height in the center of the cake. Reserving a couple of tablespoons of the ricotta cream, spread the rest over the bottom and sandwich the top half. Spread the reserved cream in a thin layer over the surface of the cake and scatter over the grated chocolate, which should conceal all but the very edge of the cream. Set aside in a cool place.
If keeping the cake longer than a few hours, cover, chill, and bring it back up to room temperature for 30 t 60 minutes before serving.